NZ Quote of the Year finalists chosen

From Maurice
Williamson’s colourful support for the marriage equality
bill to a widely shared quip about the GCSB on social media,
it has been another good year for the witty one-liner.

The
10 shortlisted finalists in Massey’s annual Quote of the
Year competition will now be put to a public vote.

As
always, some the best quotes were comments on New Zealand
society, including author James McNeish’s “In New
Zealand nobody takes you seriously unless you make them
yawn”.

Quotes from female artists, including New
Zealand’s rising female stars Eleanor Catton and Lorde,
also captured our imagination in 2013.

“Lorde’s
‘I’m not a spreadsheet with hair’ is powerful because
it helps dispel the myth that it’s okay to judge people by
their monetary value, rather than by their unique
abilities,” says Massey’s speech writing specialist Dr
Heather Kavan, who helped choose the shortlist. “I think
this is a myth many people would love to see
dispelled.”

“They were all great quotes and it was
difficult to choose between them,” Dr Kavan says. “In
the end we chose the gay rainbow quote because the speech
became known as the gay rainbow speech.”

Dr Kavan says
quotes from politicians tend to dominate the list because
they get a lot of publicity.

“With some of the quotes,
especially the ones in which Kim Dotcom and Winston Peters
question the Prime Minister, there is also an element of
pleasure at seeing someone in a superior position
questioned,” she says.

Dr Kavan started the New Zealand
Quote of the Year three years ago because she found her
speech-writing students had trouble identifying memorable
lines.

“The quotes I knew were too old for the students.
Edmund Hilary’s “We knocked the bastard off” was said
in 1953. Muldoon’s one-liner about Kiwis going to
Australia “raising the IQ of both countries” and
Lange’s “I can smell the uranium on your breath” quip
were both said in the 1980s.

“I thought there must be
some good contemporary New Zealand quotes, but no-one is
collecting them.”

Dr Kavan and her judging panel
narrowed down several dozen entries nominated throughout the
year by Massey students and the general public to a top 10.

She describes the judging criteria: “Memorability is
paramount. The gay rainbow line with its colourful imagery
is a good example of this. However, many of the quotes
appealed for different reasons. The GCSB one stood out
because it was funny and most people can relate to having a
frustrating experience with a government department.

“We were also keen to get quotes that were relatively
spontaneous, such as Winston Peters’ ‘What didn’t he
know and when didn’t he know it?’

“Another
criterion was context. We chose ‘He’s an extraordinarily
lucky cat’ because Moomoo’s story made international
headlines and even the word ‘extraordinarily’ seemed
like an understatement.”

Now, it is your chance to vote
on what stuck in your mind or tickled your fancy this year.

Voting closes
at 5pm on Thursday December 19, with the winner announced on
December 20.

The shortlisted finalists for the
2013 New Zealand Quote of the Year are:

• If
there was a dickhead that night, it was me – MP Aaron
Gilmore reflecting on how he got intoxicated and called a
waiter a 'Dickhead' at the Heritage Hotel in Hamner Springs.

• Why are you going red, Prime Minister? – Kim
Dotcom at the Parliamentary enquiry into the GCSB spying on
New Zealand residents. I'm not, why are you
sweating? – Key's reply to Kim Dotcom.

• The
GCSB, the only government department that will actually
listen to you – Unknown origin but repeated on social
media.

• Male writers tend to get asked what they
think and women what they feel – Man Booker prize
winning novelist, New Zealand's Eleanor Catton.

• I'm
not a spreadsheet with hair – Auckland
singer/songwriter Lorde.

• What didn’t he know and
when didn’t he know it? – Winston Peters querying
John Key’s knowledge of the Parliamentary Service’s
actions.

• In New Zealand nobody takes you seriously
unless you can make them yawn – author James McNeish
at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival.

• That
little ball of fluff you own is a natural born killer
– Gareth Morgan's Cats to Go campaign
website.

• He’s an extraordinarily lucky cat
– Massey University veterinary surgeon Dr Jonathan Bray
after removing a crossbow bolt from the head of Wainuiomata
cat Moomoo.

• One of the messages that I had was that
this bill was the cause of our drought. Well, in the
Pakuranga electorate this morning it was pouring with rain.
We had the most enormous big gay rainbow across my
electorate – Cabinet minister Maurice Williamson in
his speech to Parliament supporting the gay marriage law.

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